Throughout my career I have tried my best to avoid work in industries that I consider as doing harm, e.g. oil & gas, defence and financial services companies like JP Morgan that have a large prescence locally.

In the last few years I have worked for a cloud consultancy with similar values, however, I have still found myself working on projects for clothing companies that I would consider as fast-fashion with questionable supply chains.

I am starting to wonder if I need to take my skillset in another direction to find more meaningful work. I took an interest in C# and microservices in the past and while that has worked out well for me, it seems to have locked me into a very enterprise world with values that rarely align to my own.

Has anyone faced a similar dilemna? Basically, I am struggling to find my Ikigai as I do not feel like the world needs the work that I am doing.


There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

  • @captainlezbian
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    111 year ago

    Lol of course. Being an engineer is like being a lawyer. You can do ethical work for very little money and a massive amount of time and a ton of competition or you can sell your soul for time with your family and a roof over your head